


He's Scared of Me?

by twinpeaksrocktoss



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: BUT MAKO IS FINE, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, OFC SHE IS, Post-Movie: Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018), Sad, angsty, big sad, but like, hopeful, poor bby newt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-04-25
Packaged: 2019-04-27 23:18:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14436306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twinpeaksrocktoss/pseuds/twinpeaksrocktoss
Summary: Newt visits Mako for some much needed support....Inspired by @newtgender and @newtbiszler 's posts about Herm's trauma following Uprising :(





	He's Scared of Me?

“Calm down and tell me what happened,” Mako Mori used her crutches to manoeuvre herself over to the small sofa in the corner of her room and gestured for Newt to join her as she sat down carefully. Her cast had been signed by nearly everyone in the Shatterdome, but Raleigh’s name stood out as the largest, scrawled in thick blue pen, the ‘i’ dotted with a small heart. Newt couldn’t bare to look at it, or the thin scar cutting across the left side of Mako’s face, so he sat down and stared resolutely at his hands. 

“We were playing chess,” he began, keeping his breathing steady despite the way both his legs were bouncing up and down, causing his entire body to move. “It was supposed to be like, calm, ya know?”

Mako nodded patiently. 

“But, uh, I - Hermann let me win, so I sorta like, _shouted_ to celebrate,” Newt felt himself shrink, curling his shaking arms against his chest, trying to make himself as small as possible next to Mako’s perfect posture. “And he _flinched_. He twitched away from me, and his eyes, Mako, he was so scared,”

“I see,” she reached out and placed a hand softly on his shoulder. 

“H-he- I could see it, like in his entire face, he was terrified. He was scared of me, of my voice, cos of what I did,” he stared at his hands, slightly raised and shaking violently, feeling tears spilling freely down his cheeks, slightly collecting against the lower rim of his glasses. “I’ve hurt him so bad, Mako, an-and he’s scared I’ll do it again,”

“You won’t,” she said simply, plainly, as if it were the most obvious thing to say. “You won’t hurt him because you love him,”

“I loved him then, I’ve loved him this entire time and still look what happened!” Newt’s voice was somehow undisturbed by the falling tears streaming down his face, but it caught a little with his exclamation. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to shout again I just-“

“It’s alright, Dr Geiszler,” Mako kept her hand on his shoulder, so he made a conscious effort to keep that part of him as still as possible, as if his own panic could somehow damage her. 

“ _Fuck_ , Mako, I hurt _so many people_ ; I hurt you, I-I hurt Hermann, Christ, I hurt Hermann and now he’s _scared_ of me-“

“But you didn’t, you weren’t in control of your own mind, your own body,” her voice was soothing and familiar; Newt tried his hardest to tune out the other sounds rushing through his head to focus on her words. “You fought against them, you tried to stop the Precursors,”

“And look where that got me,” he laughed humourlessly, bitter self-loathing darkening his tone. “I tried to kill you both, Mako,”

“But we’re both still alive,”

_“But I tried to kill you,”_

“Not you,” she shook her head decisively. “The data we took from that PONS unit you set up between yourself and that Kaiju specimen revealed that there was considerable and near constant activity from the part of your brain which was still driven by _your_ consciousness. You were fighting them, Dr Geiszler, you did all you could,”

“It wasn’t enough, though,” he bit down on the inside of his cheek, just to stop his teeth from chattering together. 

“So he reacted... badly to your voice; then what happened?” Mako asked soothingly, rubbing small but firm circles on his shoulder to calm down his increased shaking. 

“Well, he looked like he was about to cry, so I knew I’d fucked up real bad, so I apologised, but then he _did_ cry and started to say _he_ was sorry, so I just-“ Newt squeezed his eyes shut “- left, I had to get out,”

“You came straight here?” She gave him a soft look, ducking her head to maintain eye contact. 

“Yeah,” he swiped at his nose with the back of his hand. “No, I went to the bathroom and threw up for a bit, then I went to find Herm but he was gone, so _then_ I came here,”

“I see,” she stopped rubbing his shoulder and positioned herself so she was holding him at arms length. She had always seemed so much older than she was, more mature, certainly more so than Newt felt at that moment; he felt like a child feeling guilt so strongly for the first time. 

“I just... I hurt him so bad and I don’t think I can come back from this,” he admitted weakly. 

“I agree,” she said in that special Mako blend of firm but gentle. “Of course you won’t come back from this,”

“What?”

“That’s because we don’t want you to come back, we want you to move forward,” she squeezed his upper arms. “You and Dr Gottlieb have been through horrors and traumas none of us could dream of and absolutely, of course there will be lasting effects. You can’t just run away from the situation when one of these traumas makes itself known. It is going to be difficult but you love each other, and you’re both resilient. You’ll heal, you’ll learn to live with the past and you’ll grow, Newt, both of you will,”

He looked at her: Mako Mori, Stacker’s orphan daughter, Jake’s greatest idol, Raleigh’s drift partner and wife; Mako Mori, once rookie, then pilot, then hero, then Secretary of the PPDC, now Marshall like her father before her; Mako Mori, the girl who used to draw colourful Jaeger designs with Hermann’s chalk when her father needed someone to look after her. She was so grown up and so, so strong. 

“You called me Newt,” he gave her a watery smile, which she returned with a bright, sunny grin. 

“I think you need to be Newt, now more than ever,” she squeezed his arms again before letting go. “You’re a good man, a good friend. Now go and find Gottlieb,”

“Thank you, Miss Mori,” he smiled again, settling his only slightly trembling hands down on his knees as he made to get up off her sofa and find Hermann. She nodded. 

Just before he left the room, he turned back - one question had been burning inside his head since Mako had been released from the intensive care unit all those terrible months ago, “hey, Mako?”

“Yes?”

“Do you forgive me?”

“There’s nothing to forgive,” she stood with the support of her crutches and pulled him into a careful hug. “You are as much a victim of those creatures as I am.”


End file.
